Research

Broadly, my research explores food systems, cities, and the environment at multiple scales through a lens of urban political ecology. More specifically, my current research examines the intersection between urban agriculture (UA) movements in the US and Canada, food systems policy and planning, and the specific urban political economies and historical geographies in which they arise. I also work on environmental justice issues. I conduct both applied and theoretically engaged research using a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods. In doing so, I hope to innovate urban environmental and food systems research on a theoretical level by drawing attention to social processes: notably social movements, everyday governance and politics, and the broader political economy, and how these articulate with and work through race, class, and gender in the broader historical-geographic context of settler colonialism and racial capitalism. At the same time, I hope to contribute to critical geography and food studies through my commitment to participatory and community-engaged activist scholarship with implications for policy and planning. Ongoing and past projects include:​

I am also collaborating on a community-based participatory research project called Resting Safe, which examines environmental justice issues in rest areas (or encampments) for houseless individuals. The project brings together houseless community leaders and activist-researchers to investigate and intervene in environmental hazards in the places where houseless people are building homes. This project will arm houseless communities with information about their sites' precise types and levels of pollution, and will provide tools for communities to reduce risks, themselves, or push government agencies to do so. I'm honored to working with an amazing team that includes several former students on this project, funded by the Antipode Foundation and NSF.

Over two years, my senior capstone students and I conducted interviews with 20 participants in various programs of the non-profit Growing Gardens. Transcripts of the interviews, as well, as short A/V clips of the various gardeners are posted to the project website, and also linked to Julian Agyeman's collection of various food justice initiatives across the country.

Survey of UA organizations and businesses in the US and Canada (2013 - 2014)

Mike Simpson and I conducted a survey of urban agriculture initiatives to better understand the practices, motivations, networks, labor and funding sources, and on-the-ground needs or UA organizations and businesses. We released a report of our preliminary results in 2014. Based on this survey, our article in Agriculture and Human Values identifies and describes six diverse but overlapping "motivational frames" - Entrepreneurial, Sustainable Development, Eco-Centric, Educational, DIY Secessionist, and Radical - employed by practitioners engaging in UA.

Who is at the table? Fostering anti-oppression practice through food justice dialogues (2013)

This multi-year project was the focus of my doctoral dissertation work at UC Berkeley. My dissertation advisor at Berkeley was Nathan Sayre, and I also worked closely with my committee members Dick Walker, Jason Corburn, and Gary Sposito,and an advisory committee comprised of representatives from city agencies, community members, and non-profits. Research was funded in part by a mini-grant from the HOPE Collaborative and sponsored by City Slicker Farms. My team of undergraduate research assistants and volunteers and I inventoried vacant and underutilized public land in Oakland in order to assess its possible contribution to urban food production. The resulting report, Cultivating the Commons (released in November 2009, revised in 2010), has been used by the Oakland Food Policy Council to inform municipal food policy in its report, Transforming Oakland's Food System: A Plan for Action, and by the Oakland Climate Coalition for the Energy and Climate Action Plan. ﻿﻿As soil contamination may be an obstacle to the expansion of urban agriculture at some sites, we conducted soil sampling at about 120 of the vacant sites we identified, and used GIS to map and analyze concentrations of lead (Pb). Preliminary assessment of 20 sites in July 2009 was funded by a pilot research grant from the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources Analytical Lab in Davis, CA. Funding from the National Science Foundation allowed us to expand our sampling to 100 additional sites throughout Oakland in 2010. We also conducted an experiment at UC Berkeley's Oxford Tract Greenhouses and collected plant tissue samples at selected urban gardens to assess the bioavailability of Pb in urban soils. At the site-scale, we located potential "hot spots" where metals levels are high enough to be of concern; similarly, at the neighborhood- and municipal-scales, we identified areas in need of further assessment before food production proceeds. See picturesof our work in the field and lab, maps, and the resulting articles in Applied Geography, Landscape & Urban Planning, and the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems & Community Development, or my complete dissertation. I revisited the dataset for an article in published in Geoforum, in which I develop a "critical physical geography" of urban soil contamination.

I worked with the French non-governmental organization Zanmi Lasante Paris, which operates in coordination with Partners in Health, to conduct a farmer needs assessment in the Plateau Central. We interviewed 200 farmers in more than a dozen villages, as well as conducted a baseline survey of agroecological characteristics and farming practices. The report (also published in French) was quoted in the opening lines in a National Geographic article on soil in Haiti. More importantly, the research laid the groundwork for a "training of trainers" workshop in June 2005 for extensionists working with two peasant organizations, ASEDECC and SOPABO. I developed the training materials (in Kreyol) with fellow NCSU alum Arthur "Gill" Green, now faculty at Okanagan College.

I took a semester off from my thesis research in North Carolina to work with The Rodale Institute, which at the time had an office in Thiès, Senegal. The Joor soils of Senegal's Peanut Basin are inherently low in organic matter, limiting yields of millet and other crops and threatening the food security of smallholders. We conducted a series of focus groups and interviews in eight villages to characterize site-specific fertility management practiced by farmers in the Peanut Basin. On-site measurements revealed little significant difference between the effects of compost and manure on peanut and millet growth, but significant increases over unamended areas. Similarly, chemical analysis revealed increased cation exchange capacity and nutrient concentrations in soils amended with compost or manure. Similarities in the chemical characteristics of compost and traditional pile manure (sentaare) suggest that development workers could emphasize improved pile management rather than promoting more labor-intensive composting. See the resulting article in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability. The Rodale Institute hired me the next year to identify and interview innovative farmers across Senegal for a series of thirteen stories, Sustainable in Senegal, published in Rodale's online NewFarm magazine.

Compost and vermicompost production and utilization in sustainable farming systems (2002 - 2004)